Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine

Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine is an American actor, playwright, photographer, and documentary filmmaker. Born in 1967, he worked professionally under the name Ntare Mwine until 2008 before adopting his full name. He is recognized for his diverse work across theater, television, film, photography, and non-fiction filmmaking, as well as his advocacy regarding HIV/AIDS eradication and LGBTQ rights.

Mwine was born in Hanover, New Hampshire, to parents from Uganda. Following his parents' separation when he was seven years old, he spent his youth between his mother, a psychology lecturer at the University of Nairobi in Kenya, and his father, a Harvard Law School graduate who worked in finance for institutions such as the World Bank in Washington, D.C. Mwine pursued higher education at the University of Virginia, the Royal National Theatre in London, and the Moscow Arts Theatre. He later completed a Master of Fine Arts degree through the Graduate Acting Program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 1992.

Mwine launched his professional acting career in 1992 playing the role of Paul in the United States national tour of Six Degrees of Separation, a performance that earned him nominations for an NAACP Image Award and a Helen Hayes Award. He continued to perform on stage throughout the 1990s in productions such as The Riddles Of Race, Circa '68, Nomathemba, which earned him a second Helen Hayes Award nomination in 1997, and Scent of the Roses. In 2003, Mwine premiered his debut solo play, Biro, at the National Theatre of Uganda. The story follows an HIV-positive former Ugandan rebel soldier in a Texas prison. Biro subsequently toured internationally, staging performances in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, London, and across Africa, including a 2004 presentation before African heads of state and United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Mwine made his television debut in 1995 on New York Undercover and his feature film debut in Blood Diamond. Over his television career, he secured guest and recurring roles in several prominent series, including CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, The Riches, and Treme. He portrayed the recurring character Usutu on Heroes, having previously been cast in an unedited pilot role that was removed prior to broadcast. In 2018, he joined the cast of the Showtime drama The Chi as Ronnie. He was later cast in 2021 as Detective Raymond Griggs in the Netflix adaptation of The Lincoln Lawyer.

In addition to acting, Mwine has established a career as a photographer and documentary director. His photographic work has been published in Vanity Fair, incorporated into the series Six Feet Under, and exhibited at venues including the United Nations, the Fowler Museum of Cultural History at UCLA, and the Latino Art Museum in Pomona, California. His first documentary film, Beware of Time, focused on HIV-positive Ugandans and received the award for Best Film on Matters Relating to Marginalized People after screening at international festivals in 2004. He later directed a second documentary, Memories of Love Returned, documenting the archive of Ugandan photographer Kibaate Aloysius Ssalongo. In 2019, Mwine delivered the keynote address at the Ugandan North American Association convention in Chicago.